8
ROWAN
Something inside me shattered.
Not cracked. Not bent. Butshattered.
My ears rang as if the room had suddenly filled with static. I couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t see properly. The walls of the office felt too close, the air thick and suffocating.
My mom baked peach cobbler in the summer and scolded my dad when he tracked mud into the kitchen. She smelled like lavender and sunshine. She listened to her music loud and she laughed carefree. My dad taught me all about horses and looking after the land and he would always wish me a goodnight no matter what.
A sound escaped my throat before I realized it was me crying.
Not loud. Just small, broken breaths that I couldn’t stop.
The room spun. Then suddenly strong hands caught my arms and hauled me upright. One of the men behind me had grabbed me. His grip tightened painfully around my biceps as he held me upright.
My world tilted on its axis and my knees buckled. For a second the only thing keeping me standing was this man’s grip.
Everything I knew about my parents twisted apart in my head.
The quiet ranch.
The isolation.
The way we never had visitors.
Had any of it been real?
Tears blurred my vision.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. “I swear to God I didn’t know.”
No one answered, and the silence was worse than the shouting.
Then suddenly the man’s hands were gone.
I stumbled forward, my legs barely working. Before I hit the floor, Tex caught me. His arms came up around me fast and steady, pulling me up against his chest like he’d been waiting to do it. For a moment I didn’t even fight it. I just held on to him.
His leather vest was rough under my fingers, warm from his body. I could hear his heartbeat through it, slow and steady. It was so different from the chaos currently inside my head.
“I didn’t know,” I said again, my voice cracking. “Tex, I swear?—”
“I know.”
The quiet certainty in his voice made something inside my chest loosen just a little. He believed me. At least someone did.
But when I lifted my head, the rest of the room still looked at me like I was a loaded gun sitting on the table.
JD leaned back in his chair, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers. “Maybe,” he said.
The word felt like a slap.
“Maybe?” I repeated. My voice sounded hoarse, raw. “How could I have known? Why would I have come to you if I did know? Do you think I have a death wish?”
A death wish, because I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that the Kings wouldn’t put a bullet in my head if they thought I’d betrayed them.
JD shrugged one shoulder. “Whether you knew or not doesn’t really matter right now. Certainly not to the cartel.”
